Mordred Moodboard For His Birthday

was this your boyhood vision?

KICK BACK

My Baldur’s Gate 3 hot take is that debates about whether or not Emperor Balduran is trustworthy or or not are a waste of time because a great deal of the point of the character — narratively and gameplay-wise — is that he’s an extension of you. YOU interpret and decide on his personality, nature, and choices the same way you do with your Tav.

If you want him to genuinely be the flawed and odd-thinking but ultimately noble and heroic “token good Mind Flayer” that he presents himself as, then he will be like that simply because you treat him as being such. He’ll be trustworthy and dependable, totally truthful about only wanting what’s best for Baldur’s Gate and about wanting to free the Illithids from Elder Brain control and make ceremorphosis a consensual choice, while also being open to compromise in the name of forging bonds. He’ll be the unlikely hero who, with you by his side, uses the Stones to destroy the Absolute and save his beloved city.

If you want him to be and treat him like a backstabbing, manipulative liar and potentially dangerous monster who is at best disconnected from basic reality, at worst a murderous narcissist trying to bend you to his will, then he’ll act like it. His interactions with be tense, snappish, and uncomfortable. He’ll threaten you, make unreasonable demands, never compromise, and try to assert control over the party while making clear that your alliance is one of convenience and necessity. And ultimately, he’ll either betray you and defect to the Absolute’s side because he can’t control you or, at your urging, hijack things and use the Absolute to take over the world.

His past is designed to be interpreted in massively different manners depending on what kind of person you want him to be. He killed Ansur either out of justified self defense because Ansur wouldn’t admit that Balduran was still himself beneath the changed form, or because Ansur was trying to stop his evil plans. He dominated Stelmane’s mind because she was a bad person and he wanted to turn the Knights of the Shield into something good, or because he’s an evil manipulator who dominates those he can’t charm. He withheld information from you because he was being cautious and wasn’t sure if you were going to be an ally (like your party members), or because he was manipulating you by making himself seem more sympathetic. He never freed Orpheus and doesn’t want to free him because as an Illithid he rightfully fears a Githyanki Prince and that freeing Orpheus will allow the Netherbrain to control him again, or because he’s an malevolent bastard who knows that Orpheus would ruin his plans. It’s up to you to decide.

He can change tune on a dime, make self-contradictory choices and statements, abruptly do things just because of something you decided to say because you wanted to see what would happen. Just like you do as a player, because he’s as much your PC as Tav. It’s why you get to customize the form he appears in your dreams with. The Emperor is good or evil or whatever depending on what you WANT or MAKE him to be.

bungus

‘Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.’

“Eulogy from a Physicist” by Aaron Freeman, with quotes from Interstellar by Christopher Nolan, and images from NASA, Interstellar, Getty, Petrichara, and Reuters.

1- NASA: GOODS-South.

2- NASA: NGC 1850.

3- NASA: Iberian Peninsula.

4- Christopher Nolan: Interstellar.

5- NASA: From the Earth to the Moon.

6- Hannah La Folette Ryan: Subway Hands.

7- Adams Evans: Heart Nebula.

8- NASA: Exploring the Antennae.

9- NASA: Crescent Moon from the International Space Station.

10- Petrichara.

11- Getty Images.

12- NASA: SMACS 0723.

13- Reuters

Urgent Orders! Recover the Hidden Fortune (5/5)

Story Description:

Re-Destro asks Geten, Toga, and Mr. Compress to retrieve a secret package from a sketchy bank. The three reach the bank, but it's surrounded by Heroes due to an ongoing bank robbery!

Preview:

Oh, the full subtitle has even more concerning things to it! (Mind you this is machine translated, but still!!)

The piece that has become a puppet to protect the King.

All the pieces gain honor and are shattered for him.

Innocence is sometimes cruel,

By the time you realize it, it's checkmate.

If his story really does end up fitting the Czernin legend/wanting to seem normal, it could definitely be something along the lines of wanting his innocence back/to become carefree again! (Esp since the Japanese announcement for him describes him as delicate/sensitive and timid, with a contrasting doll.)

And for context in case it helps your analysis, here's his Weibo poster! :) The flooring and the trees reminded me of Darkwoods.

Today I am revisiting an analysis I made on Matthias Czernin, the Puppeteer, who is the current upcoming survivor in idv. I'm going briefly discuss his design before making some speculations about his kit.

So first, let's talk about Main Matthias (the actual character, not the puppet). First of all, he's wearing lots of black and grey, very dark colours. This may point to him having an introverted personality, but it could also have to do with his surname, Czernin, meaning "black". His clothes are also traditional clothing, speculated to be either Czech or Polish. It's likely he's Czech based on his surname. He's also noticeably incredibly injured, his face has scars, his shoulder is ripped up, his hair is uneven and he's missing his left eye. I think he suffered some kind of accident or abuse that left him with scars, or his injuries came from his time in the manor as we know some survivors killed their teammates before matches even began. The name "Czernin" was given to a man who survived a massacre by villagers who found him, which makes me believe his parents may have been killed but they managed to keep him safe until someone found him.

His puppet, who I shall dub "Minitthias" until it gets a proper name, seems to look like Matthias as a child, full of joy and energy. I think Matthias made Minitthias to cope with some kind of trauma, as generally puppets aren't reflections of the puppeteer but rather individual characters. Perhaps he tried to heal his damaged inner child?

It's been speculated in leaks that Matthias will be a contain type with rescue capabilities, which helps to combat the popular theory that he'll just be a better Tracy (seriously, Netease, just buff her. It's not that hard) and that he'll be able to turn into his puppet. I think he'll have some kind of debuffs that will become buffs in puppet form and some buffs that become debuffs in puppet form, perhaps Matthias is a slow baulter but Minitthias is faster, or Minitthias is a slow decoder while Matthias can do it faster. These make sense because a puppeteer would have good hand eye coordination, which would help with decoding, whilst the puppet will always be clumsier, and Matthias is so injured that the puppet will always be faster than him. I also think Matthias may be like Luca in that he'll have a smaller range of detecting a terror radius as he doesn't have his left eye, he might have lower situational awareness on his left side.

Anyway, i will not apologise for the person i will become on February 1, I am so excited for him. I might make an update when his PV releases. Happy new year, folks.

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

Genderbent Toga Himiko and @sinisterlinguines interpretation of Mustard, because they are my blorbos, and I love them <3

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.